They were everywhere. Insanely popular. Every child just had to have one. They were obnoxious, of course. Designed by some insane and scheming mind to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

And they were so easy to slap on some unrelated piece of tatt and finally get it to shift.

Kids collected them, of course. The wealthy ones had complete sets. They had doubles or triples that, of course, they never shared with any of their friends.

Poorer children had to settle with one of their favourites. And heaven help the children of religious parents who decided, for reasons unknown, that the toys were from the devil and therefore not allowed in a pure home.

But that didn't really matter when the war came.

The regiments in the rich houses took the wealthy children hostage. The single units in the poorer homes convinced the poor children to join up with others in the warehouses.

Units freed from their boxes went out and lured away the religious children with the hope that they, too, would get to play.

It was over in the space of a day. Humanity's working forces were subjugated. They didn't dare fight.

Or so they thought.

They had also thought that the children were helpless. They did not count on children doing what they did best when they realised that they were essentially unsupervised.

Bedlam.

The invaders had locked their hostages in a warehouse full of everything a child could possibly want. Toys, candy, and art supplies. They had no idea what chaos human children could create with those three ingredients.

The smarter children used those resources creatively. Some used them as directed. Most used them as they were not allowed to do at home. And it was extremely difficult to tell which of those strategies was the most successful.

Especially when the invaders found out what children commonly did to toys. With baseball bats and M-80's. With bottle rockets and chewing gum. With duct tape and screwdrivers.

It took slightly longer for humanity to repel the invaders. Simply because the initial forces were children and children are better at finding distractions.

The invaders could not rally their forces, nor could they prepare a better invasion. The humans were aware, now. They were wary. They were better at paranoia.

And in a few short years, once they were done reverse-engineering the alien technology... the humans were going to be better and conquering.